Road Trip & Eye Surgery

Quinny went to the eye doctor on August 28th to see about his eyes crossing.  She looked again at his head bobbing and eyes rotating and said it was good we got the MRI and it was all clear so it's something he'll grow out of (which we already knew).  But his eyes crossing is another problem and it's definitely gotten worse.  His condition is called Stabismus and her solution was eye surgery to lengthen/shorten the eye muscles to make the eyes point straight again.  He is all signed up for surgery on October 31st.    But after talking to some people at work who have kids with eye problems and after researching the surgery a bit on the internet I made an appointment with an eye therapist (not Kaiser paid) on Friday to explore a second opinion/option.  It seems that the reason his eyes point in two different directions is because his brain is only sending a signal to one eye at a time - so the surgery will correct the direction his eyes face, but not the signal the brain sends, and will ultimately still result in vision loss in one eye.   We are trying to keep our options open but we really want to give him the chance to see with both eyes, not just one for the rest of his life...   if the eye therapist says there's nothing therapy can do for him then the surgery will have to do, but I'm hoping that eye therapy will be able to fix the signal from the brain to the eye which will utimately fix the direction his eyes point.

Meanwhile - we got to go on a family Road Trip last week!  Our first night we spent at Lake Billy Chinook camping, the boys did awesome and Quinn only woke up once to eat and to get warm again.  The water was still a little cold so Ronin didn't want to swim in it, but Quinny is a brave baby and really wanted to get in and charged the waves like a little bull. :)

Ronin at Lake Billy Chinook

Quinny and the duck

Quinny eating puffs

Ronin writing in his travel journal

The next day we went to Prineville and stayed at a Best Western so we could use the swimming pool and have free breakfast :)   The boys loved the pool and we loved free waffles and biscuits and gravy in the morning...   After that we went on an excursion looking for "thunder eggs" (rocks) for Rory and Ronin... after much traveling around the forest roads we found a free site to dig so they got to fill up a bucket of thunder eggs-- but on our way back out the car broke down and wouldn't go back up the hill.  We tried for 2 hours to rock the car, push it, dig it out, give it traction... but nothing seemed to make the wheels spin.   Luckily we had cell phone service so at about 5pm I called for a tow truck, and finally found someone willing to come find us because he was "sorta" familiar with the forest area.   At 7pm he said he was on his way.  At 9:45 I called to see if he was still on his way and his secretary said he lost phone service and she'd radio him -- luckily she did because he was lost in the forest too... after a lot of discussing which map to go by they all figured out where he was and where we were and at 1AM he finally found us!  The kids were asleep in the car for most of it.  At 2am we were able to get the last hotel room at the Best Western again.  $400 tow truck bill later...  we are very lucky we had cell service out there since it was a 5 mile hike back out to a main road...   Ronin and I did get to see some big bear tracks and when he drew in his travel journal he drew a tow truck because that's what he remembered the most I guess.

A big rock in Prineville

Looking for thunder eggs

Me and Quinny waiting for them to finish finding rocks...

After our tow-truck adventure we bagged the idea of driving to Crater Lake and stayed in Redmond instead where Rory's manager friend got us a hotel room at the Sleep Inn for $39 a night... which made it cheaper than camping plus we got free breakfast every morning :)  The first day we went to Petersons Rock Garden, which was actually pretty cool.  Everything was made out of rocks and there were peacocks everywhere.

Godzilla!

Sneaking up on the peacocks in the bushes...

Rory doing a push-up in the rock garden... Ronin looks like he's standing on his back.

Me "planking" at the rock garden

Ronin picked a water lilly for me

Hanging out in the stroller...

He found a stick

Brothers hanging out

The next day we went to a family fun center to play games and do some bowling in Redmond...

And we visited a chocolate factory "Goody's"

Ronin got his picture on a tank...

We left Saturday morning and made it home just after lunch. Ronin begged to see his friend Sean, so we had him come spend the night.  They were so excited to play in Ronins new fort in the backyard- I had to give them flashlights and bring them popcorn and banana bread out there... haha

The fort is mostly finished- we are going to add a porch with a slide coming off one side and zip-line off the other eventually. :) 

Quinny is almost ready to walk, he's been pushing things around so he can walk behind them.  I give him a couple of weeks before he takes his first steps!  Ronin didn't walk until he was 13 months, I thought I had more time!  Quinn is 10 months old today and just about ready to walk.  Scary!

Quinn practice-walking!

That's about it for our vacation and events! 

Lots of Love,

C